When the US dollar definitively loses its status as the reserve currency of the world there is no great competitor to replace it.

Bitcoin has features which make it uniquely appropriate for this: namely that no other currency is so resistant to debasement.

I anticipate it will recover and set new records.

I think this thesis is completely broken.

All of US manufacturing went to China because labor was cheaper.

You can't build things when you don't have a robust manufacturing base

One of the biggest things though is housing.

The US, Australia and probably most developed countries have declining productivity in construction.

(1985) https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w1555/w1555...

(2025) https://www.nber.org/digest/202502/stagnation-us-constructio...

That shouldn't be tied to China. Indeed arguably China might help with cheaper materials potentially.

I think the name is not unique enough

Yeah there's a popular self hosted media server designed for... other purposes

Any ideas?

Interestingly, this is the kind of negative feedback that your post implies is bad. Thank goodness for negative feedback!

> that your post implies is bad.

Where does this come from? Please quote where he said "negative" means "bad".

self-fulfilling prophecy

You are right, but it's just a whataboutism argument, isn't it? There are lots of other evils by other businesses; why are they relevant here?

This comment was replying to someone asking "how could engineers possibly write such malicious code" so a more glaring example from a more mainstream company seemed quite appropriate.

I love this write-up. As a non-expert user of package managers I can quickly understand a set of patterns that have been deeply considered and carefully articulated. Thanks for taking the time to write up your observations!

> Or if one really cares about the loss, use direct current

I thought direct current had higher transmission losses vs AC

Not if it's really high direct current, like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-voltage_direct_current

Problem is they need these https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HVDC_converter , for these https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HVDC_converter_station which are expensive. So it depends on circumstances, how and when its economically feasible to use HVDC, or not.

AC has higher losses over a transmission wire because of the changing magnetic field that it induces which creates losses.

There's a cool effect where if you hold a fluorescent tube under a high voltage power line, capacitive coupling from the varying electric field causes it to light up. Some energy is continually leaking out via this route, the tube just reveals it. (Magnetic induction too)

https://youtu.be/0D50Dcvzkr4

You can feel it yourself if you have a piece of metal, like a bike.

Tesla vs. Edison is back! :)

You raise such an interesting point!

But consider: as LLMs get better and approach AGI you won't need a corpus: only a specification.

In this way, AI may enable more languages, not less.

kayfabe competition.

Much like Americas regulatory and soon to be administrative.

You are obviously correct, but I don't know that it really matters.

As I see it, the movement is about pointing out that the most useless dumbest biggest failure of a mega corporation is actually great in light of their current practices.

Why does it matter whether they would have messed it up if they implemented it today?

Restated: the point is not that clippy is great. The point is that he sucked, and that he is great relative to what kinds of products Microsoft is creating today.